Quilting

Hooray! I got the borders on “County Fair”, so the second of my 8 RSC2025 projects is now assembled. Next year I am scaling down my project count.

I got the binding hand-sewed down on Bonnie Hunter’s L&E challenge from last year called “County Clare”. So many little pieces, but I’m glad to have it finished & love the secondary circle pattern of green squares.

I made some Black & White framed blocks for the new block drive at Many Hands Many Hearts. If you want to make some, too, get all the details here. She wants blocks with black on white & some with white on black frames. I opened my black on white box, cut some strips & started sewing. This is what happened. Maybe next month, I’ll open my white on black box & make a few more? Who knows?

Finally, I was able to dove-tail & accomplish two goals with this top finish. I made these blocks for RSC2024 & 2025, so it becomes my 12th WIP for the year & I made my goal of finishing 12 tops begun before 2025. Plus, it becomes my 3rd RSC2025 top put together. So yay! This will be going to Cynthia at Many Hands Many Hearts & hopefully a teen will like it.

I had hoped to get “County Fair” to the end this week, but alas, it was not to be. I simply ran out of time & energy. Mostly because there’s a LOT of sashing in this. All those pieces between every block took a while to assemble. I got the stop border sides on last night before giving up. So the top borders & then the white? low volume? wider borders will go on & it will be done.

Not sure what is next, but hopefully I can get one more WIP done to meet my goal of 12 for the year. We’ll see. I’m sick now with a stupid virus, so sewing will slow down because my brain doesn’t want to work. Brain fog!

Here it is! My first RSC2025 flimsy for the year. Happy dance! It is Scraptastic Stars by Melissa Corry of HappyQuilting & made entirely from scraps in my stash. Yippee! (Well, except for the 2 gold FQs I purchased to get some more variety.) I’m very happy with this & will put it in the queue for quilting in the new year.

In my long-time quilt group, we are now working on a flag quilt that has 3 shades of blue stars by a block of red stripes. I tried to do it all from my stash, but couldn’t collect enough matching background, so bought yardage for that, although red & blue were already here. We need 20 of each blue shade, so the first set of stars is done! These are my light blue, then I’m doing a medium & a dark star.

If you’re tired of seeing my slow progress on these gift baskets, then you’ll be pleased to see that I’m DONE! Last photo of these baskets you will need to see. So much of life has intruded on my limited sewing time that these took me SO MUCH LONGER to make than I anticipated. But they are done & turned out pretty cute, so hopefully each of my quilt group ladies will find a color palette they like at our Christmas luncheon next month.

In my one hour of free sewing yesterday, I was able to start on assembly of an RSC2025 project. Yippee! I made the strip sets & subcut them, then started sewing them into 9-patches. These are part of the sashing for Scraptastic Stars by Melissa Corry of HappyQuilting. Although I’ve made several of her patterns, this is the first one of hers I purchased & never got around to making it. I’m super excited to get this one done this year. Looking at how little time I have to sew each week, I’m unsure if I will get all my RSC2025 projects assembled this year, but this one is a definite!

We had a delayed 40th anniversary trip to Hawaii for the last part of October!! It was 18 months overdue because of health issues & it was our first time to visit. So great! We went to Laie & Honolulu on Oahu, then Kona on Hawaii. I read about Queen Liliuokalani when I was a girl & have always wanted to visit the Iolani Palace in Honolulu, so it was on our list of things to do. We spent a while in the room where she made a crazy quilt while she was imprisoned after being overthrown by the American business owners. This is one of the squares.

Assembling my RSC2025 quilts has not yet begun. (sad face) And even though I haven’t yet finished the tops for the last two quilt group projects, we started a new one this week, so I spent my few hours of sewing time on cutting background fabric. I cut one blue fabric at group & started sewing flying geese for the stars. I put together two of them so that I could feel like I had accomplished something after sewing so many parts.

The good news is that I finished hand binding the last of these four donation quilts this week. The three lap quilts will be going to the Gift Boutique at Festival of Trees for Primary Children’s Hospital & the baby will go to Joyful Welcome for unwed & teen moms at local hospitals in Utah. The red quilts are much cuter in person with the scrappy low volumes I’m famous for using. 🙂